Is Breast Best?

[ADaddy]

First of all I want to say that my heart goes out to all the women out there that are struggling trying to breastfeed their child and feeling the pressure to continue.

My wife gave birth nearly 3 weeks ago and since then has had a really rough time with breastfeeding. I just wanted to share some words with women in a similar situation. I'll put them in points to be more concise.

1. There is so much more to being a mother than just being a milk supply. Don't ever forget this!

1. This is about feeding your baby. It is too bad that they don't have "Feeding councillors" rather than just "Breastfeeding councillors".

1. Your baby's nutrition and hydration is vital. Don't feel guilty for making sure your baby has both of these.

1. The well-being of the mother is also vital. You need to be there for your baby, does your experience with breastfeeding enhance your well-being or make you feel like the contents of your babies nappies?

1. Unless there is imminent danger, Healthcare professionals will put breastfeeding above things such as sleep, washing, bonding, jaundice. It pains them to say the word "formula" so don't expect them too.

1. Healthcare professionals are mainly interested in the colour of poo, if wee is coming out and if the baby is at least gaining some weight. In that case all is well, forget the rest. This is NOT a holistic approach and one of my main bug-bears with breastfeeding promotion. There is a much bigger, far more complicated picture to consider to determine if breastfeeding really is working for you.

1. If you have a latch problem then they like that, they can help solve that. It's different when it is a supply problem, that is not always solvable and they tend to be in denial about it (mainly because it is far more difficult to solve).

1. Demand feeding:

a. Is lack or sleep good for mother or milk supply or to that end baby?
b. Is not being able to find time to eat good for anyone?
c. Is no time to wash good?
d. Does baby sleep a lot and forget to demand only to wake up ravenous and too fractious to feed?  Can't be possible, this does not fit in the ideal world of demand feeding :)
e. No routine, no structure, no way for an adult human to live?
f. Are you told, don't worry, keep going your milk supply will come through soon?
g. Feels like it is driving you insane?  Maybe it is!

1. Is the difficulty of breastfeeding affecting your bond with your baby? It is hard enough, healing, hormones, baby blues and worse, don't be pressurised into sacrificing this important step under some misguided notion that your baby will suffer by not being breastfed. He/She is likely to suffer more if you are not able to nuture this all important bond.

Of course, these questions and statements come from our personal experiences, although from what I have read on the internet, we are not alone.

If you read through my points and breastfeeding is still the right approach for you, great! If not, then do the best thing for you and the baby (yes, that is YOU too) and consider alternative approaches.

And before you ask, the only vested interest I have is in the health of my wife and baby and doing what is best for them.

Comments welcome.

larry bear in mind that Tiktok comes from the background of IRO 3 years study, and experience of dealing with thousands of mums and babies - not just one child. Her qualification is the second highest in infant nutrition that it is possible to get and she knows far more about that area than any midwife or health visitor unless they also have separately done the same training (and even then they don't have the experience in just that area), and most paediatricians also have very limited understanding of infant feeding (scary as that is).

While in your case your baby may have been skinny but fine, in other cases with different reasons for problems, babies won't be. It's true that over weighing can lead to undue stress and I've frquently seen TT sggesting that people consider reducing the frequency of weigh-ins - but only after she's considered all the facts about an individual case.

Organic,

That is why I suggested seeing an expert WHEN there is a genuine concern.

Although I have huge respect for Tiktok and believe my wife had some superb support from her in threads here about 2 years ago, I do not really believe that her qualifications compare with a paediatric specialist in neonates (7 years to be a doctor, another 3+ specialising, another 20 of experience with babies) in identifying whether a baby has a medical problem with nutrition. He was also very unarrogant and pragmatic and more than happy to refer us on to a paediatric nutritionist. However, in the end, as he said, solid foods and being more upright led to slow (he is still thin aged 2) but steady weight gain.

I do agree with you, though, that as regarding BF itself, someone like Tiktok is way more knowledgeable than the paediatrician.

hi ADaddy, i just wanted to comment on your original post, i haven't read all 11 pages of comments so forgive me is this is repeating stuff already mentioned.

i wanted to address the 'guilt' your wife feels and how you felt the need to explain your choice to formula feed your baby.

A bit of background on me, i breastfeed my baby for 14 months, just stopped last week. I breastfeed through particularly difficult circumstances in the beginning, he has had some formula, it being a necessity because I had emergency surgery and he needed to be fed. I am proud of myself that i breastfeed under not the easiest circumstances and proud that I made it to 14 months. Just of how I was proud of myself when i ran a half marathon, it's not something everyone wants to do but it's what i wanted to do and i achieved it.

in saying that however, i would never ever judge anyone as to how they choose to feed their baby, breastfeeding was right for me and my baby just as formula feeding is right for other mothers.

I'm not sure where this 'guilt' and 'pressure' come from. In my experience I have never met a mother or health care professional who has judged another mother for the way they feed their child. Of all the many mothers i meet everyday I have never found them anything but helpful and supportive of each others decisions.

I'm not sure where these very complex and emotional issues around breastfeeding come from whether it be the media or our own invention. but I don't really think posts like yours help. This is not an attack on how to feed your child, just like all our parenting decisions this is yours alone to make but i guess I felt like the post was negative towards breastfeeding and this upset me and in many ways i thought it was unnecessary.

i wish you all the best with your new baby. One day your wife will be able to have a long shower again, possibly even a bath!

Ok my absolutely last post on this interesting if frustrating thread.

First thing you learn once having a baby is that guilt is an intrinsic part of the parenting experience - sometimes it is pointless sometimes it helps you remember the priorities.

Banishing guilt entirely from my child rearing choices no matter how liberating could render me a sociopathic parent, alleviating the guilt from this morning when I forgot to take dd1 to school in her PE kit is probably wise.

So of course crippling guilt and self doubt about a decision around when to stop bf is harmful, the odd twinge of guilt however, is par for the course and is not going to harm you your wife or your child and will recede quickly as your child grows and whole new worlds of guilt and inadequacy open up - its fab [grin
]

Hi TheRealMBJ, larrygrylls and tittok

TheRealMBJ, yes I do support my wife and baby when I am at home, sorry you didn?t understand the post.

Point taken about the tone of the post, I guess that stems from feeling for my wife in the difficulties she has gone and is going through. I don?t feel points 3 and 6 are contradictory, in our case we were concerned that the baby was only just getting enough and his jaundice was getting worse. Supplementing the feed helped.

I have discussed several possibilities with my wife based on other people?s experience, and rest assured, people are more than happy to tell her directly. I don?t believe I am entrenched in my views, I will support my wife in whatever she decides, however, what works for one person, does not necessarily work for another and there comes a point when individual experience is the fundamental for the decision making process.

I don?t believe I have snubbed any dialog, I guess we agree to differ on that point.

tiktok, very interesting regarding formula and clinical trials. I will look into that.
Yes I was summing up, however, I do feel like a mother is made to feel like she hasn?t tried hard enough by continuous questioning of what she has tried before and reports of what other women have achieved after a period of time. Perhaps this is just a continuity of care problem.

larry The problem is that judging when there is concern is really hard for parents who just don't have the experience, so the advice to ditch the scales, while well-meaning and in many cases good advicem is not safe as a blanket statement :)

Of course I don't compare TT's training to a paed's for general infant care. I think she's great but I don't imagine she'd be happy operating on my bub (), but what I obviously poorly was trying to put across is that on her field she does know more than others who don't have her specialist training. Paeds know loads more about infant health in general, but a BFC or IBCLC is the expert in that one area of infant nutrition and breastfeeding.

I'm glad you got on so well with your paed. Very refreshing given some of the stories I hear :(.

No one on this thread thinks that if a woman ends up formula feeding through lack of support that they should feel guilty. Everyone here knows how difficult these first weeks can be. This is why you had supportive posts rather than this thread ending up in a FF v BF bunfight.

Statisically, in hundreds of research articles formula feeding has been found to be inferior to breastmilk, to my knowledge, it's never been found to be better than breastmilk which is why the professionals that you have seen are so keen for your child to receive breastmilk.Therefore banging on about statistics in the way that you are is totally ignorant. If your wife had been saying I want to formula feed from the start then you might have had a different attitutude from them about feeding but clearly your wife wanted to breastfeed. If indeed you are posting about your real experience, from your posts it sounds like you have not PRACTICALLY and MENTALLY supported your wife, which is why people have been commenting on ways that you can support your wife.

But feel feel to have your views which are clearly set in concrete.

I don't want to wave qualifications around - I am not medical, but I do know about breastfeeding and I have other relevant quals which I will not talk about so as not to out myself here.

I can't assess sick babies at all, and I'm not making any comments about your baby's history, larry! No reason at all to think you had anything but excellent care from the paed - eventually.

But I wanted to counter your view that babies actually don't need to be weighed until they actually look 'way too thin' or 'lack energy'....and I said that waiting that long is risking serious malnourishment (not 'long term development' or brain damage or organ failure - malnourishment, which is bad enough, really, surely, and longer term does risk other consequences anyway).

Weighing, as I explained, is a tool alongside other things, and helps assess feeding adequacy. Telling people that once the midwife's gone to only break out the scales when the baby looks 'way too thin' is not good advice, honestly it isn't. I am talking from my training and my experience here and a pretty good knowledge of what the research tells us about weighing babies.

Weighing (along with other ways of assessing) can spot less than effective feeding early and soon enough to make a difference. I have seen many babies who looked as if they were feeding ok (they came to the breast ok) but they were not really transferring milk very well, and this showed up on observation of a feed and the scales. It's a lot easier to intervene by improving the breastfeeding at that early stage than to wait until a baby looks 'way too thin' or 'lacks energy' :(

Aww, adaddy, I think this is really unfair:

"I do feel like a mother is made to feel like she hasn?t tried hard enough by continuous questioning of what she has tried before and reports of what other women have achieved after a period of time."

Not one single person has intended to make you or your wife feel like this. Anyone who has attempted to post in support has been doing so to try to help you both during a very difficult time. All of us with children understand what those first few weeks are like and it's important to understand that it passes, and that stopping BFing means that you lose benefits that you may not consider as you're not getting them right now. Also, people are pointing out that moving to formula is not necessarily going to stop some of the problems that you have reported in your original post. Should we stand by and not point out some of these things to ensure that you have as much information as possible to make your decision? Or just as importantly, people who are reading this thread and thinking the same things - should they not be given information which you may know but they hadn't considered?

Yes, Organic carrot cake is right, I feel a bit miffed that you wrote that, on an earlier post I told my story and said that my baby had jaundice and I had to top up with formula etc but at 6 weeks we managed to stop the top ups and then I breastfed for a long time. I certainly didn't want anyone to think that I was gloating or trying to make anyone feel that if they also didn't do that then they should feel guilty. I wrote it because actually that might provide your wife and any others reading this thread with a glimmer of hope.

Ungrateful, ungrateful, ungrateful indeed.

Tiktok,

You are clearly a confident expert in your field. However, the normal HV response to a baby not putting on weight is "have you tried supplementing with a bottle" or "breast feeding is not working, you should switch to a bottle". My wife was told both of these relentlessly by a series of health visitors. And "your baby is too young to have reflux" when he clearly had reflux (we were too inexperienced at the time to know it although even we suspected it). This was normally coupled with a glare as they complemented the mother with an obese formula fed baby for "shooting through the centiles". I suspect (though happy to be proved wrong) that the above is closer to the norm than the high quality support that you might offer.

There is also a downside to weighing which is the added stress to the mother which I do not believe can be helpful in establishing good feeding. In addition, I think it stops parents' natural instincts for when their baby has a problem (or is doing fine). Everything comes to depend on the monthly (or more frequent) weigh in. Maybe it shouldn't but it does. I would be interested how many mothers (and fathers) on here find weigh ins stressful. If I am in a tiny minority, I will step back and desist. I suspect you might be surprised how many feel this way, though.

We have definitely not weighed our second (rather chubby) boy as it was always perfectly clear that he was heavy enough, even on 100% breast milk. What purpose would it serve?

larry I know you wrote that to TT but sadly you are absolutely right about the very many HVs who give out that awful advice. And also about weighing being very stressful and often not productive.

BUT the point TT was making is that it's dangerous for people to assume that weighing is not to be done as when done properly and with understanding it will pick up important problems before they become dangerous.

You asked how a parent would know what is best between those two hard places... which I'll let TT answer .

larry - after the first month or so, if you are confident that you have a healthy baby and feeding is going well, then I agree frequent weighing is unnecessary. But in the early days weighing is important, surely? A baby a couple of weeks old isn't alert and energetic at the best of times, how else are you going to be sure everything is fine?

Rita,

I actually agree with you. I said after the midwife left you should not weigh. I seem to remember our last midwife appointment was at 1 month and assumed that was the norm. During that first month, I am all for frequent monitoring, including weigh ins.

I think our last midwife visit was at 10 days.

larry - a health visitor whose only response to a bf difficulty or a baby whose intake is not enough, is to say 'give formula' is just not doing her job properly. There are hardly any situations where this is the only thing worth discussing - the vast majority of bf mothers have other options to fix the problem.

I am going to explain (yet) again - weighing is a tool. It does not need to be used often when a baby has 'proved' he is clearly thriving - no more often than once a month is evidence-based guidance. Most babies won't even need it this often, but it's not a bad thing, even so. If 'everything' depends on the weighing, then that's poor care - and the answer to that is not to ditch the weighing until the baby looks 'way too thin' or 'lacks energy' which is what your advice was. The answer to poor care is for HVs to be better trained. If the only answer is 'don't weigh' until what I am saying are late signs of poor feeding, then we will have sicker, skinnier, babies who no longer have the option of full bf, 'cos that ship may well have sailed.

A few parents really don't realise when their babies are in quite dire straits. We don't live in a world where everyday people see everyday babies without clothing, and for many parents, their first close relationship with a baby is their own. I have seen worryingly skinny babies whose parents thought they were ok. I have also seen worryingly skinny babies whose parents knew there was something up, but who were not listened to properly by their healthcare providers.

Weighing is one of several 'checks' we have, and it does not depend on parents being in touch with their natural instincts. It should not be any more frequent than necessary. I don't know why you keep arguing with me about this :(

Very very few parents are still seeing a midwife at a month, larry.

Standard practice is for the midwife to hand over to the health visitor at 10 days - and even then the midwife may only have seen the baby a couple of times since hospital discharge.

Hi organiccarrotcake, of course I believe that no-one intends to make a mother feel guilty and yes you are right to communicate your own experience. I think the difficulty is the assumption that we or anyone else will follow the same pattern. I suspect that unknowingly, what is meant as words of encouragement may end up as being interpreted as criticism and inadequacy, especially to a mother that is probably struggling enough with her current situation.

Thank you for your story ohanotherone and apologies if I came across as ungrateful.

My ds' breastfeeding "career" very much follows the scenario described by Tiktok: a child that lost a lot of weight initially (with hindsight, it was "catchdown growth" in the he was adjusting to his correct growth curve having been "overweight" at birth), who has, to all intents and purposes happy healthy and alert but who was also not "transferring milk" adequately because the little tike was a lazy bugger who didn't like being woken up so pretended to be feeding.

It was right that I got him weighed regularly in the initial weeks and I got fantastic support from the BF counsellor midwives. We did work on his latch and his transfer - but in the mean time, we gave him bottles of EBM for every alternate feed.

However, echoing larrygrylls experience, when we did see a paediatric consultant (when he was about 6 or 7 weeks old), he wasn't really interested in the manifestly healthy, happy and alert baby in front of me, asked what my dad was doing (who he's used to work with), told me that ds would beign moving back up the growth curves once he had adjusted to "his" growth curve (which he did) and told me to "stop the faff of expressing and enjoy my baby". :)

Again, the BF counsellor midwives were right to refer me, in case there was a more serious reason for his lack of weight gain - but by the time I saw him, he was starting, albeit slowly, to gain weight. (I did see a registrar paeditrician almost immediately so if there had been a more serious concern it would have been dealt with)

It demonstrates two things: one, that bf in the early weeks can be bloody difficult for all sorts of reason and two, that good support can make all the difference. I was "taught" to look at the baby and not the growth chart.

Just to make it clear: the breast feeding counsellor midwives that I was seeing were attached to the maternity hospital and ran a weekly breast feeding support group: that was why I was able to continue to access them and also meant that I/they had easy access to paediatricians if there were any concerns. It's also why I was able to avoid HVs who might have been not so well informed.

"of course I believe that no-one intends to make a mother feel guilty and yes you are right to communicate your own experience."

Im no expert(no real idea what im talking about) but imo I thought most of the guilt a mother feels is her own, its not fair to ask for advice and palm off what you dont like as a guilt trip.

The funny thing here(friends/family) breast feeding is seen as unusual and FF the norm. If I wanted to BF and couldn't, Im sure I would probably feel guilty/abit of a failure, noone else would think anything of it.

adaddy So what would you prefer? This is a support forum after all. If support is interpreted as criticism, or "making mums feel guilty" then we're damned if we do. And if we don't become BFCs or peer supporters, or try to offer our support as parents, we hear "there's no support for BFing". IE we're damned if we don't. Nice.

No one offers their personal experience with the assumption that you and your wife will follow it. What people who have offered their experiences are saying, "We're with you. We've been through this. It's hard. We sympathise. What has happened to us is never the same as what's happening to you - but parts may be and knowing you're not alone can make a difference to some people. If we had known what other people know when we were going through our experiences, it would have helped."

Oh God, it is not that I didn't understand your post, I said it 'makes little sense' in the context of this thread and what others have posted in response to your situation.

To be frank, despite your 'appreciation' you seem hell bent on disregarding anything other than your own, initial and unchanged opinion.

And the reporting of experience was not even to Adaddy's wife - it was to him! And he asked for people's comments, experiences and views....what are people to do?!

To support what organiccarrotcake says: one of the things that inspired me to persist during the difficult times (sometime used to take me over half an hour to get ds latched on :( - and then he would take 40 minute son one book and then have the same stuggle to get him on to the other boob - no wonder my bum wnet numb with sitting!) was one of the mums who had been at an ante-natal breast feeding support group who was there to talk to us about her experience. She had really been struggling with a "breast refuser" and had been on the point of deciding to exclusively express to feed her baby when she discovered that her ds would feed through a nipple shield - which is what she then proceeded to do for 6 months (which is unusual but worked for her).

This was in contrast to the other mum, whose baby, the same age, was literally twice the size of the first baby and almost looked overweight, despite also being exclusively breast fed.

That first mum inspired me - and apparently I in turn, inspired others, as I returned the favour by later going along myself with ds to the ante natal workshop to talk about my experiences.